Former KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick stated that the band’s 1997 LP “Carnival of Souls” got “screwed” and noted how it maintains a fan following even though Paul Stanley doesn’t seem to be a fan of it.
Bruce Kulick opens up on the album
What would be remembered as KISS’s attempt at grunge was also the final album of the “unmasked” era and the last to feature Bruce Kulick. It also marked Eric Singer’s second KISS studio album after he stepped in to assist in completing the highly underrated “Revenge” from 1992 in the wake of Eric Carr’s illness and untimely death.
By the time “Carnival of Souls” came around, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley were already in plans for a worldwide reunion with Ace Frehley and Peter Criss. The seeds for a “masked” reunion with the classic members were sown after KISS’ famous appearance on MTV Unplugged, which had Frehley and Criss appear as surprise guests. However, both Singer and Kulick was not aware about the plans.
“It’s a record that got so screwed”, Kulick tells VRP Rocks in a recent interview (via UCR). Since Paul Stanley wasn’t buying Gene’s idea to push the heavy sound established on “Revenge” deep into grunge territory, Kulick recalls going to great lengths to warm The Starchild to this vision of an “edgier, darker Kiss”.
That included pouring a lot of time and effort into songwriting and riff-crafting. Eventually, the guitarist got credited as a co-writer on nine of the album’s 12 songs. He added:
“I know it’s a record that [Stanley’s] not proud of, yet for some fans, they love it. He’s entitled to that opinion of course. But I look back at ‘Carnival Of Souls’ and I just wish it was mixed a little differently but I’m still proud of it.”
